One in a Million: The Gaelic Singer

'It’s a beautiful language,' she adds. 'When you hear a native speaker, it’s a very fluid, melodic language. It’s a beautiful language to hear spoken.'Bruce Deachman

In 1992, Fiona McDonald joined the newly formed Glengarry Gaelic Choir. A year and a half later, she became the choir’s director, and realized that if she were going to run a Gaelic choir and teach other members how to sing the language, she should learn it herself, and so began taking lessons.Bruce Deachman

Despite recent efforts at a revival — it’s taught in schools again, while signposts in Scotland are now in both Gaelic and English — it is in peril of disappearing entirely.
“It’s on UNESCO’s list of endangered languages,” McDonald explains.Bruce Deachman

As a youngster growing up in the 1960s, McDonald was entranced by the mysterious language she heard her grandfather speak.Bruce Deachman

Ar n-Òran also travelled to Scotland last fall, where it competed in the National Mòd, a celebratory competition involving song, dance, recitations and storytelling. They finished third in a couple of events.Bruce Deachman

Fiona McDonaldalso competed at the American National Mòd in Pennsylvania, where she won three gold medals and a silver.Bruce Deachman

McDonald won a gold medal at Mòd Ontario, and was the ladies’ gold medallist at Mòd Canada 2009. She also competed at the American National Mòd in Pennsylvania, where she won three gold medals and a silver.Bruce Deachman

OTTAWA — A great many Canadians would recognize the music playing — it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift, but the words coming from Fiona McDonald’s mouth sounds nothing like Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah:

Tha sinne air an rathad mòr, a lorg am Prionnsa coir

Ar slighe sabhailt’ soilleireachd is stolda

Toirt tiodhlacan gun diladh fhein

Ach gràdh cho blàth mar phlaide grèin’

A sgaoileadh dìon a chaoidh, oh alleluia

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Allelu-u-u-ia.

As a youngster growing up in the 1960s, McDonald was entranced by the mysterious language she heard her grandfather speak. He would not teach her his native Gaelic, however, beyond a small handful of words; the language was no longer considered of use to anyone.

Still, she was familiar with the sounds. Born near Glasgow, she well knew the lowland burr of her parents: words and phrases like “loch” and “It’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht tonicht” (“It’s a lovely bright moonlit night tonight”).

She came to Canada when she was five, the ship journey a weeklong storm of seasickness she describes as a “misery.” The family eventually settled in Pointe-aux-Trembles on the eastern edge of the Island of Montreal, a dozen years passing before the péquistes came to power in Quebec and the family, like so many others, decided to hightail it out the province and came to Ottawa in 1977.

She got a job with Bell, and in 1984 married and moved to a farm in Dalkeith, where she started and raised a family of two children, Shona and Bryce.

Dalkeith, a part of Glengarry County and almost as far as the Quebec border on the way from Ottawa to Montreal, was settled in the late 1700s and early 1800s by Scottish Highlanders, and McDonald began again to hear the sounds made familiar to her by her grandfather.

“I always wanted to learn Gaelic,” she says, “but my grandfather wouldn’t teach us because there was a prevalent attitude at that time that Gaelic was a useless language, that it was going to die out.

“When I moved to Glengarry and got involved with it down there, that was really great for me.”

In 1992, she joined the newly formed Glengarry Gaelic Choir. A soprano, she had sung in choirs from the age of five and so was comfortable with the musical and performance aspect. The lyrics, however, were another matter, and for the first while she simply memorized and repeated the phonetics.

A year and a half later, she became the choir’s director, and realized that if she were going to run a Gaelic choir and teach other members how to sing the language, she should learn it herself, and so began taking lessons.

“At first you’re just repeating sounds,” she says. “Gaelic is very different than English; there are a lot of sounds in Gaelic that don’t exist in the English language, and the spelling is totally different, too. You look at a Gaelic word and you have no idea how it sounds.

“And until you actually understand the language, it’s hard to do the songs justice.”

McDonald explains there are six Gaelic languages: Scottish Gaelic, which she speaks, Irish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, Cornish and Manx. The 2001 British census determined that slightly more that 58,000 Scots, or just over one per cent of the population, and most from the north of Scotland, spoke at least some Scottish Gaelic, a decline of more than 7,000 from a decade earlier. A century before, more than 200,000 Scots spoke some Gaelic, about five per cent of the population.

And despite recent efforts at a revival — it’s taught in schools again, while signposts in Scotland are now in both Gaelic and English — it is in peril of disappearing entirely.

“It’s on UNESCO’s list of endangered languages,” McDonald explains.

“It’s a beautiful language,” she adds. “When you hear a native speaker, it’s a very fluid, melodic language. It’s a beautiful language to hear spoken.”

McDonald was also a founding member of Nigheanan Glengarry, or The Daughters of Glengarry, a six-woman ensemble that aims to preserve their Celtic heritage through music and song. They performed in Ontario, Quebec and Scotland.

She moved back to Ottawa in 2006, and in 2009 joined another newly formed choir, Ar n-Òran — Gaelic for “our song.” Initially the choir’s assistant director, she recently became musical director of the 10-person outfit. She’s also a director with Comunn Gàidhlig Ottawa, which promotes Gaelic culture in the national capital. She estimates the active Gaelic community in Ottawa is only 30 or 40 members strong, and when she’s not at her day job as a bookkeeper and office manager at Window Works on Boyd Avenue, she estimates she devotes 75 per cent of her free time to matters Gaelic, including the choir’s weekly meetings.

“I don’t have a life, except for this.”

In 2010, the choir put out a CD, and has another in the works. McDonald sings both traditional and contemporary songs, including the “puirt a beul,” or mouth music that came after the English, upon defeating the Scots at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, banned bagpipes, tartan and other vestiges of Scottish culture.

“So they developed mouth music so they could sing and dance,” says McDonald.

“Songs were written for lots of reasons. They had work songs to help them get through a work day. Weaving songs, spinning songs, milking songs, fishing songs. The songs went with the rhythm of what they were doing.

“And a lot of love songs,” she continues. “A lot of love-gone-wrong songs. Boating songs, battle songs. They pretty much had songs for every aspect of their life — very beautiful songs.”

Ar n-Òran also travelled to Scotland last fall, where it competed in the National Mòd, a celebratory competition involving song, dance, recitations and storytelling. They finished third in a couple of events.

“I competed as a soloist and did quite well,” adds McDonald. “I was in three or four different competitions, and while I didn’t place in the top three, I was usually around fifth or sixth.

“I didn’t expect to win; these people have been doing it longer and have more access to the Gaelic. Out here we have limited access; it’s not like there are people we can talk to every day and practise.”

Still, McDonald, who lives in Nepean with her partner, Larry Smith, won a gold medal at Mòd Ontario, and was the ladies’ gold medallist at Mòd Canada 2009. She also competed at the American National Mòd in Pennsylvania, where she won three gold medals and a silver.

“It’s a pride in my heritage,” she says. “I am Scottish, and Gaelic is one of the two languages in Scotland. It’s a very old language — almost 2,000 years old — and a beautiful one.

“It’s not something that I want to see die.”

Through profiles here and online, Bruce Deachman uncovers the people who bring Ottawa to life; people who exhibit an unusual passion or obsession. Do you know someone who is one in a million? Email the details to bdeachman@ottawacitizen.com.

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